nobody "trusts" telegram. but at least it s not whatsapp.

Can we stop doing videos as news and opinion please? They're an inefficient, annoying, and intrusive way to communicate this kind of information. If it doesn't need to be visual, it is in video format only for monetization reasons, which I'd think would be more concerning to this community.

A cringe video made by someone selling a Blockchain messaging solution.

Wow, not to pick on the narrator, but this comes off like the worst small town used car dealership TV advertisement I've ever seen.

Here's a real rundown I've put together over the years:

Pavel Durov's argument is that there should be a high functioning UI/UX experience for "non-secure" communication, and when you need it there's something much closer to Signal's very secure client-to-client encryption.

Arguably Telegram secret chats are even "close enough" to cloud chats an adversary might not notice you're doing the "super secret things" (making it harder to identify what to target).

MTProto Cloud: https://core.telegram.org/file/811140746/2/CzMyJPVnPo8.81605/c2310d6ede1a5e220f

MTProto Secret (Wrapped in MTProto Cloud): https://core.telegram.org/file/811140633/4/hHw6Zy2DPyQ.109500/cabc10049a7190694f

They also provide verified builds even on iOS (though it's a bit of a hack, not "really" quite the same thing).

The only things that can really be said about Telegram's secret chat crypto are that:

1. It's not "the default"
2. It's their own crypto (i.e., they broke "rule #1" and "rolled their own")

Ultimately though, it's been just shy of 10 years since Telegram entered the scene, and nobody has actually broken Telegram crypto in any meaningful way -- AFAIK, to this day. Still, there are hypothetical holes in the crypto when scrutinized vs something like signal. So, is it as good as Signal or Threema? Eh, probably not, is it good enough for the average person that isn't target by a nation state? I'd say probably.

Isn't metadata leakage a problem that this messenger shares with nearly every other (popular) messenger out there?

In case you actually want some useful info on that topic: https://www.messenger-matrix.de/

Stop posting videos and post well written articles.

Thats why Element(Matrix) is the way. Ideally selfhosted+federated, but even the default matrix.org is much better than most other chat apps.

The only thing Telegram has going for itself is that it's Non-Meta and Non-Western.

Anyone who has a closer look at Telegram's reputation knows that their privacy claims are dubious. If you want end to end encryption, even WhatsApp is better. But these things depend on your individual threat model.

The only reason telegram was unbanned in Russia is because they started collecting and handing over identifiable data about Russian users.

I try to explain that to people all the time, they only use E2E for so called secret chats and comply with every country as soon as a ban is on the table, there are even reports about a case in Dheli where they did so for Audiobook piracy!

Who thinks in the privacy community that Telegram is end to end encrypted? They were largely mislead. That's an option, that even prevents sync of the chat between your devices.

The thing is, Telegram has some shady things, but until Matrix becomes usable this is one of the very few usable options. And until then, use Telegram FOSS from F-droid.

Why isn't this video uploaded to peertube instead of some dude's personal bog?

I like mixing it up, even mid conversation, between Threema, Signal and Session. Put the puzzle together feds xD

Indeed it is. Use Threema 😉